FIG - Animal Behavior
FIG - Animal Behavior
Guides Home | News | Tutorials | Reference Sources | Citing Sources | Evaluating Sources
This page should help you with your library research assignment. Feel free to contact me with questions. You may also want to try the UO Libraries LibX Toolbar for your browser!
Librarian for: Biology, Neuroscience, and Environmental Studies
ph: 541-346-3076 dpwalton@uoregon.edu
Find an article here:
The above search box is searching the following specific databases, that you might want to try individually:
- Our main database for information on the life history, ecology, and taxonomy of animals. It can also be limited to search for peer-reviewed articles.
- Interdisciplinary science database. It can also search the Zoological Record Database, but with a less user friendly interface.
These databases focus on behavior, but fewer animals are indexed in the databases.
Psychology & Behavior Sciences Collection
Find a book
- See also:
- This database covers much of the open access literature but may fail to cover important for-pay access sites. in UOWorldCat (UO Libraries and beyond)
- Use less specific terms than when searching for articles. E.g., if you want books that will tell you about electronic noses, you might need to search for a book on chemical sensors or sensor systems, which would include electronic noses.
- UO WorldCat searches for articles, and many other formats besides books. To limit to books, click on book under format on the left side.
- You may get better results if you do a Subject Heading search for a broad term. To do a search by Subject, go to Advanced Search. You also can click on the subject heading links at the bottom of the full record display for a book that you like, to get more like it
- Excluding the UO books, WorldCat is only updated a few times a year so many recent purchases could be overlooked using this tool.
A few book search tips:
Tutorials
Short Video: How to read a scientific journal article
Short Video: Evaluating WebsitesReference Sources
(Located in the Science Library)
Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia QL 7 .G7183 Volumes 1-17 2003
Online
International Union of Conservation of Nature (IUCN)
Compare the above reference sources with:
- Do the articles have identified authors? Are the authors' credentials and affiliations available? Do the articles have references or bibliographies? If so, are there differences in the kinds of references given?
- Wikipedia is a very handy, free Internet source, but it is not necessarily reliable. For a humorous demonstration of this phenomenon, watch this excerpt of the Colbert Report. (Some improvements have been made to Wikipedia security since this was aired.)
Citing Sources
For more information about citing sources generally, other style formats, and citing electronic sources, see:
Citing Sources in Research Papers
This web page contains a wealth of information on evaluating information sources both in print and on the Web: Critical Evaluation of Information Sources
To determine whether a particular periodical (magazine, journal) is scholarly (peer-reviewed, refereed) or popular, see these pages:
What is "peer-review"?
Here are a couple of pdfs that provide good explanations of what it is (and is not), and why it's particularly important in the sciences:
- Peer Review in a Nutshell
- Sense About Science Short Peer Review Guide
(NB: both of the above are produced in the UK, so there are a few Britishisms that may not make sense)

